This is what I'm about. Jesus Christ is my Savior, Redeemer, and Friend. Chocolate is...well, I mean it's CHOCOLATE. And my family is just so super important to me. My children are my life. They are with me nearly 24 hours every day. I love my dear husband and wish I could spend 24 hours a day with him! Then there's my midwifing. I love it. I'm currently an apprentice and will always be a student. I love this work!

Friday, May 24, 2013

Flats Challenge Day 5: What's working for me?

To those of you who have starting following or reading along since the flats challenge, welcome! It's an honor to have you here and I'm so excited to share future posts with you.

So, let's talk about what's working for me, and what's not. I'm still perfecting which folds work best with which diapers. I located a couple receiving blankets to add to my stash, so that makes for more things to play with! The t-shirt flats work very well in the t-shirt fold and the pad fold. Most of the other folds simply don't work with them because of their shape. They might work on newborns, though since they would fold down smaller. The receiving blankets work with the kite fold, airplane fold, origami fold, and another fold I may have invented. I'll have to research around to see for sure! What I do is take my square flat (or make my rectangle into a square) and fold corner to corner to make a triangle. Then I do a sort of accordion fold across the crotch area, so it's like a combination of the origami and the triangle fold. Then fold up the tip a little to adjust the rise, or not. Then fold into your diaper. And bring in the wings. I do better with pictures, so try to follow along here.

This fold is especially nice for those flats that are just not quite the right size for the other more complex folds. In the picture above, I took a very large, but very thin, receiving blanket and folded into quarters to do this fold. But I also have a flat that's too small to do anything but a pad fold, or this fold. The absorbency is as good as most folds, but it doesn't form a "poop pocket," so beware of that. And because of the padding fold, it can't be just pinned on. The waist would fall off. So, there are drawbacks, but I like that it has padding where it's needed and I already use my covers all the time anyway.

The covers have been working fine since I bought them years ago. I love that they are one size, so they can fit my newborns up to my potty-learners. For other families with bigger potty-learners or smaller newborns, they may not work the whole diapering time, but they sure last a long time. The camp style washer works great to agitate. The jury is still out on how the dish soap is working. Other bloggers suggested using it exclusively and I'm just not sure how well it cleans the poop diapers. I may try my regular detergent again on the next wash and report back to you. Line drying is working beautifully. Inside drying takes considerably longer unless there's a fan blowing right on them, but they still usually dry by morning. Overall, I'm pleasantly surprised how much I really like flats. They're so adaptable to needs, which, to me, is a major bonus. A decent flat could be used as a blanket, nursing cover, burp rag, or diaper. And that diaper could be adjusted to fit a newborn, toddler, or potty-learner, with or without a cover. It could probably be used for other things I've not noticed yet. I'm so glad I took this challenge!

Being on the computer most of the day everyday to edit photos, ask and answer questions on the facebook group, write blog posts, edit blog posts, comment on various blogs and so forth is NOT working well for me. I did much better with posting a couple of times a week and sometimes even scheduling a posting ahead of time. This meant I was able to spend more time with my kids and budget my internet time a little better. The house is not in order, meals are barely getting cooked, school is a little behind. But on the flip side, I've enjoyed seeing more people visit my blog, reading more comments, and I'm learning a lot, so I recognize this as a good thing. I need to learn to roll with what I get, I guess. ;) Oh, and schedule better. Maybe only write posts during nap time or set a timer for an hour while the kids play quietly or work on school work alone.

In other news, I feel like I've spent a lot of time looking at many of these views: wash bucket, line dry, change diaper, line dry, new fold, wash bucket, so I figured I take a moment to play with my new CollageItPro software. Would you like to win a code for a free upgrade? There are many different layouts, changeable options, you can crop pictures to fit, or just dump in and randomly re-order your pictures. It's a nice, easy way to make a quick collage, if you want. Or if you put a little more time into it, you can get a great customized collage, too. Enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway
. There are low entries and TWENTY (12 windows, 8 mac) winners! Giveaway ends May 31 and winners will be selected June 1.